All Things Considered

Wilderness conservation took a hit as part of this year’s federal budget compromise. A rider slipped into the bill at the last minute has put millions of acres of land back on the table for oil and gas drilling.  One of those places is South Shale Ridge in western Colorado. The area is not federally protected wilderness.  So the conservation-minded Interior Department had floated a different term for places like it, “wild lands.”  But that definition is now up in the air.

Unemployment rates fell in more than 80% of the nation’s largest metro areas last month. But the news is still mixed in Colorado.

Several years ago, journalist Mitchell Zuckoff came across an article about a World War II plane crash in New Guinea that had all the elements of an unforgettable story: There was a terrible accident in a harsh landscape, three survivors, a hidden world with a stone age existence, and a heroic rescue mission. Zuckoff tells that epic tale in a new book, Lost in Shangri-La.

The Case-Shiller home price index is a powerful way to look at the story of housing in America. You can see the boom and bust all in one simple graph.

But when we go on the radio to talk about home prices, a graph isn't much good to us — nobody can see it.

So we converted the Case-Shiller graph into musical notes.

Michele Norris and Melissa Block read from listener letters about the first installment in NPR's series on prostitution in Nashville, the cover for the video game Madden NFL and Los Angeles street artist Captain Hook.